By John Saleeby

As we all know, with the great success of "South Park", "American Pie", and "John Saleeby's Huge Cock," Sick Humor is Big Business today. But how much of this stuff is really funny? Listening to Howard Stern discuss bodily functions is always a hoot, but Jay Leno doing the same thing is like Ed Sullivan trying to dance like Elvis. To quote the late Steve Allen, too many of these people don't know the difference between the Proverbial Turd In The Punchbowl and the run of the mill turd in the toilet bowl ( Punchbowl - Funny! Toilet Bowl Bowl - Not Funny! Super Bowl? Only if one of the team's names has a 'K' sound.).

All these people owe their careers to Doug Kenney and Michael O'Donaghue, who first popularized Sick Humor through their work with The National Lampoon in the early seventies. Yes, Doug Kenney and Michael O'Donaghue, two great American humorists who gave their lives so Drew Carey, Homer Simpson, and all those Black guys on the WB would one day be free to do fart and booger jokes on network television. To you, Doug and Mike, I offer this Humble Tribute. Oh what the hell, they're dead, they'll never read it - To you, Doug and Mike, I offer this Totally Awesome Super Cool Ass Kickin' Tribute that is ten times better than anything either one of you can come up with cause you're both DEAD!! AND DEAD PEOPLE SUCK!!! HAHAHAHA!!!

I guess the first thing I'll have to say about Doug Kenney and Michael O'Donaghue is what a couple of Really Nice Guys they were. What A Coupla Swells!! I thought I should say that because every time some one has written about Doug and Mike in the past all of their friends complained about it making them out to be a couple of coke snorting psychopaths when in fact they were A Coupla Really Nice Guys. And now that we've gotten that out of the way I can get right down to de meat o' de matter and tell you that Doug Kenney and Michael O'Donaghue wuz Kuh-Raayyy-Zeeeee!! Out To Lunch! Nuts! Bananas! Cuckoo! Gonzo! Or to quote the great Psychological Pioneer Siegmund Freud "Doo-doo! Doo-doo!"

But that's cool, cause when it comes to Comedy - Crazy Rules! Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason, Woody Allen, Jackson Pollock, John Cleese - A Bunch Of Ravin' Loonies! The worst comedy happens when they hire some cheerful dullard like Steven Weber and bring in a bunch of seasoned "pros" to write "material" for him. Oh yeah, sure - You'd rather live next door to those guys than Jim Carrey and those fart lighting Farrelly Brothers, but whose show would you rather go see? Mental Health Is For PUSSIES! Right now I'm wearing a pair of boxers woven out of dead squirrel weinies and I'm not gonna change em until Katie Couric has deer antlers surgically attached to her pretty little skull. Would any of those nobodies at The Onion do that for you, baby?

In the beginning Doug Kenney was The All American Boy From The Great Mid West - Handsome, intelligent, athletic, and naturally funny. He co founded The National Lampoon with Henry Beard, a bookish, conservative, yet hilarious little guy who always wore a suit, never got high, and served in the Army Reserve. Doug and Henry met at The Harvard Lampoon, leading many lazy minded people to conclude that The National Lampoon was the logical result of The Harvard Lampoon. After all those Kennedys, Bushes, and Gores I don't think Harvard is producing anything but watery yellow baby shit.

While assembling The National Lampoon in New York they were introduced to Michael O'Donaghue, an older college drop out who had been terrorizing the countryside with his brain sizzling theatre productions and contributions to highfalootin Beat publications like The Evergreen Review and Dentures Of Desire. O'Donaghue regarded his new collaborators as "a bunch of Harvard snot faggots" but Kenney worshipped him as the epitome of everything he wanted to be when he grew up to be a Man. At this point Kenney was making the transition from Ivy League Preppy to Stinky Hippie Freak and O'Donaghue was a great role model both as an artist and a drug addled creep. Interestingly, O'Donaghue started out as a mess and become increasingly suave and debonair while Kenney started out as every American Gal's Mystery Date and slowly dissolved into a large puddle of greyish fluid that had to be mopped up before it could stink up the house.

Now to me, the greatest thing about The National Lampoon was it made it possible to be a comedy writer and ignore all those old farts who wrote for Sid Caesar back in the fifties. Those of you fortunate enough not to have been around in the early seventies have no idea how liberating this was at the time. It must have been how all those unemployed British people felt when they first heard The Ramones.

And once they became bored with the grind of putting out a monthly magazine and moved into Big Time Show Business - Kenney with "Animal House" and O'Donaghue with "Saturday Night Live" - Sick Humor moved into the cultural mainstream like a virus infecting the bloodstream of a once healthy organism resulting in muscle spasms, loss of consciousness, oozing sores, and X Files star Gillian Anderson going on The Tonight Show to tell Jay Leno a story about trying to go to the bathroom and getting her own fecal matter all over her costume and all over her trailer. Certainly, like all motion pictures and television series, "Animal House" and "Saturday Night" were collaborative efforts, but their attitude, point of view, and some other queer thing the French probably have a word for were entirely based on Kenney and O'Donaghue's work in The National Lampoon. Yeah, I know that's like telling a Metallica fan it's all based on Little Richard but most of them have never even heard of Cliff Burton so what do they know about anything?

"Better a daughter in a cathouse than a son writing screenplays. She'll suck a lot less dick." O'Donaghue once said and that's pretty much the whole story of Kenney and O'Donaghue once they became Hollywood Big Shots. Kenney became totally consumed by cocaine and produced a crazy lil' thing called "Caddyshack", pretty good compared to something like "Police Academy", but a disgraceful waste of Rodney Dangerfield and Kenney knew it. Twenty years and God only knows how many horrible comedy movies later, "Caddyshack" is a beloved classic. Maybe by 2020 "BASEketball" will get a little respect after all.

O'Donaghue became one of those guys who somehow earned a damn good living writing screenplays that never become actual movies and occasionally returning to "Saturday Night Live" where he spent most of his time insulting people before getting thrown out on the street. Eventually he was reduced to (Get ready for this one. You won't believe it.) writing for Spin magazine! Oh man! Can you believe that!? Michael O'Donaghue writing for Spin! What a LOSER!! SPIN!! HAWHAWHAW!! What the hell did he do? Throw up on David Geffen's shoes!? Spin!! Whatta maroon!!!

Doug Kenney died at age 33 when he fell of a cliff during a "sun, coke, surf, and some more coke" Hawaiian Vacation with Chevy Chase. Suicide? I dunno, somebody do an immediate investigation into Courtney Love's whereabouts at the time. Just imagine the hoops she had guys jumping through when she was jail bait!

One night O'Donaghue and the Missus were sleeping in bed when the Missus was awakened by O'Donaghue screaming "OHMYGOD!!". When she got the lights on she saw that the whites of his eyes weren't white, they wuz RED! BLOOD RED!! And she could see (Get ready for this one. You won't believe it. ) "lightning flash behind his eyeballs." A few hours later he was dead of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. I bet his final words to the Missus were "Tell em you saw lightning flashing behind my eyes, okay? They eat it up!"

In the end all this monkey business has me thinking of Henry Beard. Of all the National Lampooners Beard was the one dead set against getting mixed up in television and the movies. Since leaving the Lampoon, Beard has written or co written more than thirty humor books including "The Unshredded Files Of Hillary And Bill Clinton" and "The Complete Latin For All Occasions". So, no, he's never had a chance to cop a feel off of Linda Ronstadt while free basing with Jack Nicholson backstage at a Rolling Stones concert, but at least he's never been put into a wooden box and buried in the ground to be eaten by bugs. Cause even Bill Maher is funnier than some dead guy. Although Bill Maher dead would be pretty funny. Yeah, Bill Maher yelling "OHMYGODD!!" with the whites of his eyes turning blood red with lightning flashing while he falls off of a cliff in Hawaii, oh yeah, that would be freakin' hilarious! I'm laughin' my ass off right now just thinkin' about it!! Heeheehee! Oh, man, I kill myself sometimes, I really do.

John Saleeby wrote for The National Lampoon while he was in high school, was a stand up comic in New York, and has contributed to the net humor zines Schmuck.com, Campaign Central, and the legendary American Jerk. He's on medication now so he's probably a little nicer now than he was when you met him earlier. Email - jacksaleeby1@hotmail.com

View John Saleeby's crazy web log!

Meet some other Interesting Motherfuckers: Ray Walston by John Saleeby From My Favorite Martian to Mr. Hand. Mitch Hedberg by John Saleeby The last of the comedy greats! Al Jafee by Wil Forbis Mad Magazine's cartoon master. GG Allin by Wil Forbis Even punks loathed the performer who pushed past the bouderies. David Allan Coe by Wil Forbis Country's obscene outlaw walks the line. Bernie Casey by John Saleeby The blaxploitation star who rose from the ghetto of professional football. Bret Easton Ellis by Tom Waters Peruse the critical overview and interview with the fiction superstar. Phil Lynott by Wil Forbis Thin Lizzy's frontman rose from the streets of Ireland to the heights of rock stardom and then descended into the pit of drug abuse. Louis CK by Sean C Tarry Marvel at this stand up's ability to phrase the opposite of every song. Sho Kosugi by Wil Forbis Fear the power of the Ninja! Fear it, Bitch! Bill Hicks by Cody Wayne The mind expanding comedian gets his due. Warren Zevon by Xander Horlyk A literary look at "a moralist in cynic's clothing." Pam Grier by John Saleeby Sweet Christmas! It's the queen of blaxploitation, Foxy Brown herself! Jack Webb by John Saleeby When he created the elite police unit of "Dragnet," Jack Webb laid the first blow against the scourge of America: Hippies! Doris Wishman by Wil Forbis The prolific adult film maker, whose work includes the classic Chesty Morgan movies, is probed and prodded. Dave Thomas by John Saleeby Wendy's Dave Thomas was all about Biggie Fries, Frosties and love. Spike Milligan by John Saleeby Read up on the life of the British comedy scribe. Toshiro Mifune by Wil Forbis The Japanese actor who slashed his way through a thousand samurai movies. Nina Hagen by Wil Forbis The Wagnerian Banshee who created the blueprint for punk/funk/opera. Bob and Tommy Stinson by John Saleeby Get to know the real talents of eighties punk sensations, The Replacements. Tom Savini by John Saleeby The king of latex gore. And there's even more on our main page!

Additional Doug Kenney and Michael O'Donaghue Material: National Lampoon Online: Though the publication started by the the two stalwarts is now mostly an online offering (and a sucky one) it does have links to older material. Mark's National Lampoon Site An interesting and robust history of the magazine, run by a fellow named Mark.